Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Inventions on LDAP data management- a TRIZ based analysis

Author: Umakant Mishra
Abstract:
The data model of LDAP is same as X.500 data model. The LDAP protocol assumes there are one or more servers, which jointly provide access to a Directory Information Tree (DIT). The tree is made up of entries. Entries have relative distinguished name (RDN), which must be unique among all its siblings. The concatenation of the relative distinguished names from a particular entry to an immediate subordinate of the root of the tree forms the Distinguished Name (DN) for that entry. (IETF, RFC 2251).

LDAP provides add, delete and modify operations for data modification. Each of these LDAP update operation is atomic. That means the whole operation is processed as a single unit of work. If a modify request is supposed to affect multiple attributes within an entry, it has to either affect all the attributes or none of the attributes.
           
As LDAP does not specify any specific mechanism for data storage, different venders implement different storage mechanism, which causes incompatibility in certain operations like directory merging or integration.
           
This article is a TRIZ based study of patents on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) data management. The objective of this article is to find the major concerns in managing LDAP directories, find the IFR and trends of evolution in LDAP data management and predict the future lines of inventions on data management in LDAP directories.
           
Keywords: LDAP directory, Directory Protocol, Inventions, Software Inventions, LDAP inventions, Software Patents, LDAP data access, LDAP data storage,  Data Protection, Data security, Data Management, Data Administration


Umakant Mishra, Inventions on LDAP Data Management - A TRIZ Based Analysis (August 2006). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=925931or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.925931

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